Christchurch developer Troy Stewart said he bought the 1880s Alva St property about five years ago with the aim of housing workers from the hospital site after he had success converting properties for workers during the earthquake rebuild.
"We had some good contacts — people who said: ‘Well, look you know we’re going to need some accommodation for the workers in Dunedin’.
"But it didn’t work — best-laid plans sometimes don’t come off.
"You take a bit of a punt, don’t you?"
Mr Stewart said he had put in "a lot" of worker accommodation in Christchurch, had made good contacts and took pride in producing "a good product".
The property, known as Alva House, is listed as a category 2 historic place by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga.
It was half-full when it was bought and was now fully occupied, Mr Stewart said.
The property managers were doing a good job and there was nothing wrong with the plan for the building, but it was an issue of timing.
"I’m just going through a different phase where I’m kind of selling up.
"If I wasn’t in that same stage, we would have just hung in there, to be honest."
The "grand old lady" had some very nice rooms inside.
"There’s certainly some scope for someone else to come in and take it to the next level at some stage — it’d be really cool to be returned to a backpackers or something along those lines.
"It’s a cool building inside."
Mr Stewart said he was not resentful of the delays to the Dunedin hospital project.
"It’s life — if it was going to be really, really expensive, I’d rather see the taxpayer not get smashed and they do it a bit more sensibly than maybe what was going to happen."
Realtor Jeremy Kelleher said the property was for sale by negotiation.
His website said the 780sq m property stood on a 1573sq m section.
The property, at present, operated on individual boarding house leases. — APL
